God Damned Foul Mouthed Teenagers Make Me Furious!

When I was a boy we only had one swear word and I had to share that with my brothers and sisters. “Damn” was the word and when we dared to speak it aloud it was in hushed tones for fear of parental vengeance.

But these young people today, every third word out of their mouths is an F-bomb, an A-hole or a combination of profanity so vile they make the Nixon tapes sound like Sunday School sermons.

In my day a “ho” was a farming implement, not something you called your mother when she refused to buy you a $600 pair of running shoes. A person said “shit” when his house was burning to the ground, not when asked what he learned at school today.

If I had ever used blue language in the presence of my old dad he would have cut my tongue out with a letter opener and beaten me senseless with the bloody stump.

But today? The average sentence spoken by a young person is 70 per cent profanity, 20 per cent banality, 10 per cent inanity and 100 per cent pure and utter vulgar stupidity. If they insist on swearing like sailors the least they could do is have something of consequence to say and not just use offensive filth to cover up for their lack of vocabulary and woeful ignorance.

It’s a disgraceful commentary on the state of the nation. If the only way our young people can articulate their thoughts is through a polluted volley of expletives maybe it’s time to stop encouraging them to “express themselves,” get back to basics and start beating them over the head with dictionaries, thesauruses and the Holy Bible.

They’ll grow out of it. I remember using some choice language when I was a teenager and I’m writing my 4th book now. However–your post made me laugh and I have two school-age kids, one of whom is going on tweendom one of these days, though thankfully not quite yet. And I think you’re totally right that expletives ought to be accompanied by something worthwhile to say. But then I wonder if hormones just muddle up the brain for a few years and have to simply be waited out.

I think young people have become too reliant on cursing as a form of expression. You hear it everywhere! Last week I told my bank teller she looked a little under the weather and she said “Yeah, I feel like shit. Would you like 10’s or 20’s?” I damn well nearly closed out my account.

Good luck with your young ones and thanks so much for visiting. Hope to hear from you again.

I think you never had a chance to hear/understand curses spoken in croatian or generally balkan language. This can’t be described with common words. F-bomb is just an boring light intro to every one of them …

Can’t say I’ve ever heard a Croatian curse. At least not that I know of. Thought now that I come to think of it, I used to work with a Croatian fella and he would mutter some odd sounding words under his breath now and again.

wow, you are a misunderstood prick. Your disrespect and pathetic nature confirms it. As for Donald Mills, you need a mental health check, Beating a child is illegal and most people who have their head screwed on straight wouldn’t do it. You have a few spelling mistakes i see. Funny to say a 16 year old is more mature than you. You should rephrase your words, they are offensive to educated people.

I am so pleased to read your excellent piece on foul-mouthed young people.

In my day, even the word “damn” was considered swearing and we would be chastized accordingly. If ever we DARED to utter anything resembling a cuss word we would be promptly marched to the closest wash basin and our mouths would be scrubbed out with soap! And that certainly made us think twice about using any cuss words…ever!

In my day, even telling someone to “shut up” was the height of rudeness and would warrant a swift clip over the ears.

These days, however, for these young people it’s not just “shut up” it’s “shut yo motherfuckin hole, you dumbass retard”.

Seriously, Mr Mills I say bring back the scrubbing out of mouths for these young people who are not capable of uttering one sentence without cussing.

I have always so intensely feared the bar of soap that I don’t dare talk back to my father. Or cuss, for that matter. I’ve successfully gone 16 years without EVER having a bar of soap in my mouth, and I intend to keep it that way. I’ve seen my brothers “get the soap” and that’s enough to intimidate me. Not that I want to cuss anyway.

I can still taste the soap from the one time I said the “F-word” in front of my mother. A little corporal punishment never hurt anybody. In fact, it builds character and nobody can deny I am a character!

God Damn (very offensive curse word), you all need to chill the fuck out. if you cant stand hearing about the pimp ass (nasty racist expletive) bastard bitch slapping their hoes for not giving up their (graphic nastiness) money you need to just turn off the hearing aid. (Balance of comment deleted by Don)

When I was young I seemed to have an, shall we say, overdeveloped vocabulary for my age. I had my mouth washed out more than the kitchen sink. Not only would I get a spanking I would get my mouth washed out with soup, as if the curse words could be scrubbed away.

These young people today, there’s just no talking to them. With their rap music and their MTV… their Family Guy videos with words that would make you blush if a prostitute said them! The world is going straight to heck in a handbasket, Donald. Thank GOODNESS we have folks like you pointing out this decay in the moral fabric of our nation.

The average articulations of an adult above the age of 50 are too copious for the oxygen-deprived comprehension level of today’s teens. Elocution is totally foreign to them. They think they’ve developed a “code” language that effectively shuts out their elders. What they are really doing is shutting themselves out of a job opportunity.

Thanks for stopping in. Your father sounds like an innovator! My old mom was a pretty fine corporal punishment improviser too. If we were out in public and she didn’t have a kitchen utensil to wallop us kids with she used to grab us by the hair and bang our heads together. My sister, Erin, and I used to get our noggins rapped on a regular basis. It certainly got the point across.

Don- I’m a retired Sailor and they embarass me! If I’d ever said anything like that to/infront of MY parents, I wouldn’t have survived the beating… I remember I had just finished boot camp and was home on leave, at the dinner table I said, “please pass the damn salt”… I got NO other food the entire time I was home from that table…

Hi Don….yorksnbeans here. Just happened upon your blog through someone else’s blog, through someone else’s blog (I’m stuck in a web and I don’t know where I am and how I got here!) but, funny stuff. I’ll be back. (If I can find my way again. 😉 )

Now, this is where we enter into Problemville. The overwhelming majority of teenagers do use this pathetic excuse for speech. Unfortunately, in doing so, they block out the few of us that actually can put an intelligent sentence together. Just because I’m 15 doesn’t mean that every other word is an obscenity.

Don, actually I would love to “get you started on rap music.” Any chance of a post on that sometime? Or did I miss it already? I cuss, as an adult, but you’ve made me feel badly about it. Yes you have. For a minute.

Mr. Mills, I must thank you for a delightful afternoon’s diversion. I, too, came here via Joan of Argghh, and have spent a goodly hour enjoying not only your observations, but also your deft handling of the humorless young folk who come charging in with their hormone-driven dander up to defend the good name of “ALL TEENAGERS.”

I guess swearing to some people is like a fashion statement these days, like wearing a Che Guevara T-Shirt. I asked one ‘brotha’ wearing one of them who he was. He managed to say: “Some MF****r who got shot. Some president or something”
Gone is the age of sensitivity.
And all the stand up comedians using swears for punctuation! What’s up with that?

As you know, I abhor offensive language and rarely, if ever, use it. In fact, my original posts have no obscenities but once I apply the “Humor” tag and run it through WordPress’s spellcheck, it instantly has several obscenities added to it.

While I do appreciate the attention of an “edgier” crowd, I have not been able to show any of my posts to my parents thanks to the blogosphere’s insatiable appetite for four-letter words.

I would like to think they’d be pretty fucking proud of what I’ve done.

Which actually raises a fair point: when you listen to these young people cussin’, just pretend you’re listening to Shakespeare. Unfathomable, incomprehensible, but the rhyme, rhythm and meter of the language is beautiful… (or so I’m told).

That way you just listen to the sounds and give them whatever meaning you damn well like. Which is pretty much what i have done during every Shakespearean production I’ve sat through and probably accounts for my poor grades in English Literature.

Dear Sir:
On behalf of the actually literate and articulate young people out there (yes, all 1000 of us), I think you’ve pretty much nailed the rest of them.
What irritates me is when everything is misspelled and the word has absolutely no relevance to the situation at hand, and also when instead of saying the “Th” sound, it’s substituted with the “D” sound.
And people wonder why I can get so grumpy.
God bless!

Well holy fuck. I remember this one time when I was 13 or so, and I was helping out Christmas shopping with a lady from an old folks home and she wouldn’t stop shouting and calling me a bitch for no reason. It seems that people of all ages are equally c**tish. I personally love bit of harmless bastard swearing 🙂

I would LOVE to hear you reading your missives on some form of audio. I was going to suggest putting them on your web site as MP3s or possibly even doing a podcast, but I fear that such new-fangled ideas would only serve to confuse, frighten and anger you. Not that I’m even remotely suggesting that you’re an angry gentleman.

No, perhaps it would better suit you to record these on an Edison tinfoil cylinder phonograph. Or, if you really want to step into the early 20th Century, you could record your bits of wisdom on a vulcanite cylinder using those old reliable hand-cranked gramophones. After which, it would be up to some enterprising youngster to transfer your recordings into a digital format that would work on the gimmicky contraptions that the rest of us possess. I would then convert that into an 8-track tape so that I too could enjoy it.

Many thanks for visiting, Steve, and leaving me such an interesting comment. You know your stuff, lad, and that’s for damned sure.

You’re right about that mp3 and pod casting stuff – Greek to me and I’m not really inclined to try to learn. Figuring out how to turn on this “blog” was enough of a chore.

If I find my old Super 8 camera I’d give that a try. It would save me the typing and my personal support worker, Hattie, could do the filming. Not sure how I’d get it on the site though. Guess that’s where the enterprising youngsters with the gimmicky contraptions come in.

I am 42 years old, therefore young to some and very old to others. I hope I’m missing something and this is your idea of a joke, although I would class it with blonde and Newfie jokes. Old Farts have been complaining about young people since recorded history and probably before. The world will continue and the young will get old and then they too will complain. I wish I could be around to hear old people complain that the young are too polite and conservative. As in any situation you cannot lump people together and make statements about them that are actually accurate. Fortunately for you some of these horrible young people will wipe your ass and your drool and actually care about you in the not too distant future. Complaining about other people is a passtime enjoyed by sourpusses with no life. Get one and do something useful.

Mr. Mills, I’m an angry teenager and I agree with you completely.
Profanity is fine when it’s appropriate, but not for when you use it in EVERY SINGLE sentence! Young kids these days have no idea how to properly construct sentences without adding the words “s**t” or “f**k” in it! I’m shocked to see kids younger than me use stronger profanity than me. Kids these days have no respect whatsoever.
In the good ol’ elementary days, we were beaten for even saying “suck” in class! THOSE were the days.

couldn’t agree more sir; swearing has become a common occurance and it needs to end now, it horrifies me to hear young kids swearing in front of elders. though it is even worse to hear ‘adults’ swearing in front of their young children. disgraceful yobs.

I agree with both you and the three teenagers before me (luke, miranda, and corwind evilman). I am a 15 year old girl and while i do admit to vocalizing the occasional profanity it does not however make an appearance in every sentence and is only used when the situation truly calls for it. The majority of teenagers permeate their sentences with so many profanities that you cannot even distinguish what their original point was but i also happen to know a lot of people like myself who are capable of having intellectual conversation. I don’t believe in extreme punishment from parents if the colorful language used does not make an appearance on a regular basis because nobody’s perfect and it is extremely difficult to rid yourself completely of the vocabulary but if they are “dropping f-bombs left and right” i do believe that something should be done. And i also have a compromise like regina that if a profanity might grace my lips around young children or the elderly i revert to swearing in japanese or sign language because i do not think that children’s ears should be tainted and that people who are your elder’s deserve respect. i hope you enjoyed my point of view and i hope you have a nice day Mr. mills.

hey wats all ofthis i eancim on every oe knows ware they learn them from its all u parents .. i mean if u dont want them to say them then take them out of scool take away tier friends and dontcuss in frunt ofthem and donttlet thembe human .. i mean for crying out loud is a cuss word what theheack its not the endoftheworld …. ww they sed somthing their notsupose o say but t least thier getting thier feelings out on how they feel .. people just lighten up go to cherch or something geessss!!!!!!

Hey, what’s all of this (i’m a teenager and i don’t know what that says. eancim???) on everyone knows where they learn them from. it’s all you parents… i mean if you don’t want them to say them then take them out of school, take away their friends and don’t cuss in front of them and don’t let them be human….. i mean, for crying out loud, it’s a cuss word, what the heck it’s not the end of the world….. whether they said something they’re not supposed to say but at least they’re getting their feelings out on how they feel… people just lighten up, go to church or something, jeez!!!!!!!

Just so you know, NobblySan not every teenager speaks that way.
I thought i’d help with a translation
I hope you all have a good day.

I am glad you appreciated my translation. Since i have to deal with that five out of seven days a week, I do happen to be fluent in “Complete Bollocks”. To be honest, I kind of wish i wasn’t though. I feel like I lost IQ points just reading it. I do admit to swearing once in a blue moon but it’s not nearly as bad as everybody else in my school. It usually slips through when I manage to injure myself in some way. The other kids in my school really bother me. Two of the guys in my art class are vulgar that I just want to slap them for opening there mouths. Do they eat uncivilized language for breakfast or something? I don’t know. Anyway I always enjoy reading your blogs, especially this one, and I’ll be happy to provide my translation services in the future.
Have a nice day,
Iejir2127

As a member of the generation of degenerates I would have to say you do make good points. But isn’t there another way to look at things? We are partly to blame for being vulgar, disrespectful or lazy, but isn’t society also partly to blame. I mean if it wasn’t socially acceptable to swear nobody would do it because they wouldn’t want to be prosecuted as an outsider. Since society and Hollywood makes it seem cool to curse why wouldn’t we?

I don’t like it when people swear. Really, do you have no other adjectives to describe anything with? Bad words were always off-limits in my house and my parents do not stand for that. Potty-mouths need to just shut up.

My Dad would have beaten me into next week for cussing- and the list of forbidden words included some non-swear words too. In our house, even the word “fart” was considered too impolite to repeat. You either had to say, “pass gas” or “let a stinker.” And heaven help you should you be overheard saying you “hate” someone, or that you think someone should “shut up.” You had to “dislike” someone, and someone who was too loud should “be quiet.” Dad himself (generally being a good Regular Baptist,) didn’t swear either, at least not when we were around to hear him. He’s 65 and I don’t think I’ve ever heard him swear. I’m 42, and I still wouldn’t dare to swear in his presence!

My son made the mistake of calling me a swear word (means “female dog”) one time. Fifteen years later he has not forgotten, or repeated, that mistake.

That’s funny..I have a daughter that is so good at cursing..frankly I’m pleased!Unlike the kids you speak of..she is honor roll and funny in her right! I do know what you are talking about..but it doesn’t apply to kids..her brother was just like her ..he just started pre-med..like i say ..they don’t follow the narm!

The question is what do “curse words” actually do? They express emotion appropriately, are simple and quick. The only reason that they are considered bad is that they are derogatory. Excuse me for saying it, but the point of the words is to be derogatory, perhaps not to the person being spoken to but the subject in question. So if I were to replace fuck with fudge what would actually be achieved. It would indeed sound less harsh because of the lack of a k sound that signifies negativity but the emotion behind it would be the same. It seems to me that it is the person behind the words, not the words themselves that actually matter.

Unlike most people in my high school, I don’t have the nerve to swear. I get teased because of it. Tell me, what is so wrong about not wanting to say a cuss word every third word? I’m starting to get tired of hearing all the f-bombs. It’s not necessary to me, and they use it every day. My parents try to shield my ears whenever the word comes up on TV, and I just say, “That’s okay. I go to high school.”

Alright, I see you are exaggerating in all your posts here, I kind of overreacted when I read your first one (it seemed in line with something a really bitter old guy would say) and gave you my life story, seriously, the works. I have to admit, the ridiculous punishments are a little funny although they are a little violent. More importantly, your posts have helped me think a little critically about my own life, particularly how much I swear. And, please, answer me honestly, do tall young folk really anger/frighten you? I had my growth spurt late, and couldnt have been more pleased when I shot up past my friends (and attracted the attention of the lady-folk), but I now realize that the lack of intimidation short stature bestows upon you is as much a blessing as a curse. I would just like to know if being well over 6 feet is really an inconvenience in life.

I understand completely, but even more horrifying is the fact that children under ten are now swearing just as much as teenagers. Every day for the past few years at high school I had to put up with that verbal rubbish, not to mention they couldn’t even spell the words properly. At uni you don’t hear it so much but it’s everywhere. The last time I swore was when I nearly had a car accident last year (the young idiot pulled ou in front of me and sped up the street) but I never swear. It’s disgusting, unnecessary and it makes young people look even less intelligent. As for illiteracy, I’ve been reading since I was five and even today I prefer a good book to the trash on TV. Books should be respected, not slandered, since they’ve lasted much longer than an iPhone which gets smashed on purpose so the poor parent is asked to get the new version (I saw it last year – ungrateful child). Text-message language I cannot understand and so I text in full English. One person in English a few years ago submitted an essay completely in text message language. I could go on for ages about this and people my age probably hate me once they read this but I don’t care. Swearing, in my opinion, should not appear in everyday language, because like everything else English too is going downhill.

Wow dude. You stereotype all teens. My friends and I are all teenage boys and we do cuss a lot but nothing like you’re saying here. At least it’s always used properly in a sentence. I would not blame immaturity for someone who talks like this, I would question mental capabilities.